Dr. Nima Afraz is a Tenured Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science at University College Dublin (UCD), where he teaches and supervises within the Software Engineering program and leads cutting-edge research in network systems. He is a funded investigator at the SFI CONNECT Centre and Principal Investigator on the National Space Subsystems and Payloads Initiative (NSSPI), a flagship €7.9 million project funded by Enterprise Ireland under the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund. His research focuses on Open Radio Access Networks (Open RAN), blockchain applications in telecommunications, network automation, network economics, and infrastructure virtualisation. Dr. Afraz completed his PhD in Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin in 2020, under the supervision of Professor Marco Ruffini. His doctoral research investigated the techno-economics of multi-tenant optical access networks, emphasizing virtualisation, cost-sharing models, and software-defined networking. The work contributed to standardisation and policy literature and earned recognition including a best student paper award at IEEE ACP and the award of PhD with no corrections. Prior to his doctoral studies, he earned a Master’s in Computer Systems Architecture from Qazvin Azad University in 2014, where his thesis focused on delay-based congestion control algorithms in fault-tolerant systems. He completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Hardware Engineering at Ardabil Azad University in 2011, with research into fairness and performance of internet transmission protocols. Following his PhD, Dr. Afraz was awarded the prestigious Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Irish Research Council. At the CONNECT Centre in Trinity College Dublin, he worked on scalable blockchain solutions for 5G network slicing and inter-operator trust, including use cases later referenced by ETSI standards bodies. He joined UCD as an Assistant Professor in July 2021 and was granted tenure in 2023. Dr. Afraz has made impactful contributions to both academia and industry. His work on dynamic bandwidth allocation for Passive Optical Networks was patented and adopted into the Broadband Forum standard TR-402. His research on blockchain-enabled 5G slicing was cited in ETSI specifications, and his work on network sharing was used in a World Bank policy paper addressing affordable global broadband deployment. As Vice-Chair of the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Telecom Special Interest Group, Dr. Afraz leads industry-academic collaboration efforts that produce whitepapers and open-source prototypes. His collaborative publications with IBM and other stakeholders, such as ‘Decentralized Identity Management for IoT Networks’ and ‘Optimizing Wholesale Intercarrier Settlement with Blockchain,’ exemplify this industry alignment. At UCD, he teaches approximately 300 students annually across core modules in programming, performance evaluation, and network optimisation. His students have gone on to pursue graduate studies in globally top-ranked institutions. He also mentors postdoctoral researchers, including one who transitioned into a senior engineering role at AMD after co-leading a major EU-funded project (RE-ROUTE). Dr. Afraz co-coordinates this €700k HORIZON MSCA Staff Exchange project involving 10 academic and industry partners across Europe, with over 60 interdisciplinary research secondments under his oversight. Dr. Afraz’s societal impact includes public science writing and outreach. His writing on blockchain’s role in cybersecurity—especially in response to events like the 2021 ransomware attack on Ireland’s Health Service Executive—has reached policymakers and the public via platforms such as Silicon Republic and Medium. He also actively promotes research reproducibility through practical guides and open-source tools. As a peer reviewer for numerous top-tier journals and a technical program committee member for leading IEEE conferences, he plays a significant role in maintaining scholarly standards. He has also served on UCD’s Stage Transfer Assessment Panel and is currently a Research Studies Panel member for ten PhD students, supporting their progress and academic development. Dr. Afraz is passionate about interdisciplinary research, mentoring, and shaping the next generation of networked systems. His academic journey is marked by a blend of foundational technical expertise, real-world impact, and commitment to collaborative excellence.